Andrea

“Where’s the nobility in patching up a bunch of old tables and chairs? Corrosive to the soul, quite possibly. I’ve seen too many estates not to know that. Idolatry! Caring too much for objects can destroy you. Only—if you care for a thing enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn’t it? And isn’t the whole point of things—beautiful things—that they connect you to some larger beauty?”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“Transitions are bumpy, even the happy ones. We all go through them at some point. It takes time to adjust. Often, we feel like we should be much farther ahead than we are—unless we remember that “bare kernels” are always sown in weakness. It’s not bad to have your identity change. God promises that if we trust Him, He will replant us to reap eternal rewards.”
― Carolyn McCulley, The Measure of Success: Uncovering the Biblical Perspective on Women, Work, and the Home

“And, in this staunch little portrait, it’s hard not to see the human in the finch. Dignified, vulnerable. One prisoner looking at another. But who knows what Fabritius intended? There’s not enough of his work left to even make a guess. The bird looks out at us. It’s not idealized or humanized. It’s very much a bird. Watchful, resigned. There’s no moral or story. There’s no resolution. There’s only a double abyss: between painter and imprisoned bird; between the record he left of the bird and our experience of it, centuries later.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“We can make a little order where we are, and then the big sweep of history on which we can have no effect doesn't overwhelm us. We do it with colors, with a garden, with the furnishings of a room, or with sounds and words. We make a little form, and we gain composure.”
― Robert Frost